"I'm an immigrant and I've always wanted to write something about America"
About this Quote
There’s a quiet dare embedded in Jennings’s line: America, the self-mythologizing superpower, is so loud about what it is that an outsider’s urge to “write something about” it can sound almost rebellious. The sentence is modest on its face, but it smuggles in authority. “I’m an immigrant” isn’t a confession; it’s a credential, a way of claiming the double vision native-born commentators can’t easily access. Immigrants learn a country the way you learn a language: by listening for what people repeat, what they dodge, what they insist is “normal.”
Jennings also picks “write” rather than “report,” which matters coming from a broadcast journalist who helped narrate American life to itself for decades. It hints at a desire to step outside the daily churn of headlines and produce something more interpretive, even literary - a portrait rather than a dispatch. The subtext: the America he covered was often performing America on camera, and he wants a format that can capture the backstage.
Context sharpens the intent. Jennings rose to prominence as an anchorman during the era when network news still functioned as a civic fireplace. His foreignness was frequently treated as a curiosity, sometimes a liability, sometimes a brand of calm objectivity. The line pushes back against the idea that “real” Americanness is inherited. He’s staking a claim that belonging can be earned through attention, and that the most piercing account of the country might come from someone who had to choose it - and, crucially, kept noticing it.
Jennings also picks “write” rather than “report,” which matters coming from a broadcast journalist who helped narrate American life to itself for decades. It hints at a desire to step outside the daily churn of headlines and produce something more interpretive, even literary - a portrait rather than a dispatch. The subtext: the America he covered was often performing America on camera, and he wants a format that can capture the backstage.
Context sharpens the intent. Jennings rose to prominence as an anchorman during the era when network news still functioned as a civic fireplace. His foreignness was frequently treated as a curiosity, sometimes a liability, sometimes a brand of calm objectivity. The line pushes back against the idea that “real” Americanness is inherited. He’s staking a claim that belonging can be earned through attention, and that the most piercing account of the country might come from someone who had to choose it - and, crucially, kept noticing it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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